


You Will Always Be My Best Friend

by SlytherinOwl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Best Friends, Better Suited As Friends, Break Up, F/M, Not a Love Story, Relationship(s), breaking up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinOwl/pseuds/SlytherinOwl
Summary: Harry had asked Hermione to marry him. Now, a few weeks later, the press hounding them drove him crazy.A suggestion to Hermione led to an unexpected outcome.This hadn't quite gone as he'd planned.But he'd always be her best friend.Written for Hermione's Haven - RollADrabble RollAThon





	You Will Always Be My Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Roll-A-Drabble Roll-A-Thon over at Hermione's Haven.

Hermione tapped her nails on the wooden surface of the kitchen counter in Grimmauld Place.

“Are you serious?” She asked, slightly exasperated.

“Maybe?” Harry grinned sheepishly, while running a hand through his hair. The gesture would make anyone’s hair a mess, but with Harry’s hair, this battle had been lost years ago.

“No,” Hermione replied, “absolutely not.”

Harry’s shoulders slumped.

Hermione walked over to the kitchen table, pulled one of the chairs out and sat down heavily, resting her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.

“Let us walk through this again, shall we?” Her voice slightly muffled by her hands. “You want us to pretend breaking up so that Rita Skeeter will finally get off our backs. So, no more public appearances together as a couple, only with other friends of ours, me not coming here, you not coming to my place, and only communicating via floo for a couple of weeks? That’s what you want?”

“You make it sound so much worse than it actually would be. It would only be temporary, until that harpy has another story that is more interesting than our lives. We can just go back to normal after a few weeks.” He had the audacity to sound convinced.

“So, you’re telling me that you – Harry James Potter, vanquisher of Lord Voldemort, the Boy-Who-Lived – is afraid of the press finding out that we’re actually engaged. Tell me, has it ever crossed your mind that a break-up, no matter how fake, will definitely put the focus back on us? That they will just hound us down individually now instead of together? And that going back to normal, as you called it, will put them back on our tracks again as well?”

Harry looked almost ashamed. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad. Maybe a bit of distance will do us good before we marry?”

That had her head snapping up. “A bit of distance will do us some good? You did not just say that.” Her eyes flashed angrily. “I am going to leave now. I will not be coming back in the near future. Have fun with your distance.”

Before Harry could even attempt to protest, Hermione got up, wrenched the ring Harry had given her just weeks before from her finger, put it on the desk and apparated straight from Grimmauld Place to her flat in the outskirts of London.

As soon as she arrived, she put up wards around her flat. Only then she let herself sink on the couch, putting her face in her hands again.

She felt as though she _should_ cry, but somehow, she just felt empty.

Shouldn’t she be feeling absolutely devastated?

A quick look outside the window confirmed that while she had been at Harry’s, night-time had come.

Had she overreacted? At the end of the day, what he had said wasn’t really that bad, was it? They had spent an awful lot of time with each other in the past. But on the other hand – how did he expect their future marriage to work if he couldn’t take the both of them actually being close with each other and seeing each other a lot?

How were they supposed to live in the same flat or house if he needed distance?

Hermione decided that she needed to sleep about it. Maybe during the night she’d be clearer on her own feelings.

* * *

She wasn’t.

When she had woken up, she had felt as she did the evening before. Somehow hollow, but not necessarily sad. Not as though she’d just lost her relationship with the man she loved.

She did love him, didn’t she?

Now that she finally tried to listen to her emotions, she wasn’t as sure anymore.

When he had asked her to marry him, it seemed like the logical next step, they’d after all dated already for more than two years. But the overwhelming happiness that she heard about was missing.

She loved being with Harry.

But in the morning after she stormed out of Grimmauld Place she realised that loving being with him was not loving him.

She came to that realisation when she sat in her kitchen counter and held a cup of coffee to her lips.

Only seconds later a knock sounded from her door.

Closing her eyes for a second, she waved her hand in the direction of the door which flew open to reveal her fiancé. Or rather ex-fiancé?

“Hello Hermione,” he said when he entered.

“Hello Harry.”

“I wanted to apologise for what I said yesterday,” he awkwardly shuffled from foot to foot.

When Hermione gave him a weak smile, he came to her and sat down across from her.

“I understand that you finally want to live in peace. I know you don’t want to be in the press. But as long as Rita Skeeter lives, you will be. But you’d probably have more peace if you were to marry someone she hated a bit less.”

Harry did not answer and just looked at his hands.

Hermione sighed. He did not seem anymore shocked or heartbroken than she was.

“You know that you’ll always be my best friend, right?” She questioned.

“As you’ll always be mine.” His eyes had snapped up.

“Then let’s not make this more difficult on the both of us. Explaining to Molly that the wedding is off will be difficult enough.” The witch stood up with another sigh, rolled her shoulders and then turned back to Harry.

“Do you want to watch a movie?”

A smile came to his face. “Of course.”

And so the breakup of the brains of the Golden Trio and the Boy-Who-Lived happened in peace and quiet. Neither felt the need to further discuss why they did not work out in the end.

When they settled on the couch to watch the movie Hermione had recommended, they both felt as light and happy as they hadn’t in a while.

And they were still best friends.

Always.


End file.
